Cooper Isabel - Legend Of The Highland Dragon

It swept toward Stephen, reaching out with its tentacle and overly jointed arm. Stephen snarled and lashed out, raking claws down the thing’s uninjured side. He couldn’t breathe fire again, not so quickly, but he’d evened the numbers somewhat. That might be enough.

He felt the impact first, high on his back, and then a rapidly spreading spot of burning pain. He didn’t turn his head—couldn’t, with the hybrid in front of him and the remaining one lurching toward him from where it had fallen below the vat—but he could hear his own flesh sizzling. Acid. Stephen remembered the cloud that had come from “John Smith” and realized that Ward had regained enough of his composure to cast spells.

Stephen whipped his body to the side, avoiding a bolt of chilling shadow, and took another swipe at the hybrid. This one took its legs, and the thing’s torso fell to the ground, dissolving into shadow. Stephen turned to face the last and heard, from just far enough away that he couldn’t do anything, Ward’s voice raised in a series of blasphemous syllables, all building toward some unspeakable conclusion. Stephen didn’t know exactly what the spell would do, but he knew enough to dread it.

Then a shriek and a thud cut off the chant. A series of curses came from Ward’s direction, but these were the mundane sort.

Grappling with the last of the hybrids, feeling the chill of its shadowy hands against his scales, Stephen couldn’t see what was happening with Ward. The sounds gave him a fair idea, though: Mina. He hadn’t seen her move, but his attention had been elsewhere. So had Ward’s, apparently, and he hadn’t been expecting a mortal woman to do anything.

If Get off me, you filthy bitch was any indication, Mina had tackled him quite firmly, too.

Stephen snaked his head forward, under his opponent’s outstretched arms, and opened his jaws. The hybrid’s arms came down across the back of his neck, chilling it, but that was no matter now. He twisted his head sharply to the side, saw the hybrid collapse, and spat out the majority of his throat before leaping across the room to the place where Mina and Ward struggled.

She was on top for the moment. More accurately, she was on Ward’s back, one arm clamped around his neck, and her legs, even in skirts, giving her purchase around his waist. She’d managed to give him several scratches across the face somewhere in the process.

The problem was that Ward’s hands were starting to glow black, and the darkness was spreading up his arms. It would cover his body soon.

Mina looked up, met Stephen’s eyes, and somehow read the silent message there. She let go, dropping from Ward’s back with an alarming thud. She rolled out of the way quickly enough, though—out of Ward’s way as he lunged for her with one shadowed hand, and out of Stephen’s as he darted forward.

Instinct was almost stronger than rage just then. Stephen saw Ward and hated him. The dragon saw a small human figure, one who’d been hostile just recently. It saw prey and lunged.

Ward probably didn’t even feel it when he hit the wall. His neck had snapped seconds earlier.

For reasons, silly mortal reasons, roaring in triumph was unwise. Stephen stretched himself out instead, flexing his claws and his neck. The fight had been hard, but wizards were tricky. He had done well, though the acid still burned along his side; the girl was alive and unharmed. He turned his head toward her to be sure.

“Oh,” Mina said. She was brushing herself off, feeling at her arms and legs, wiping at the blood underneath her nose, but her eyes were fixed on Stephen, and huge. “Stephen?”

Stephen nodded, as much as he could in this shape, and waited for her to panic. When she looked between him and Ward’s body, obviously dead, he was sure she’d start running. He closed his eyes and thought about his human shape.

“Hallo, the…er, vile lair of evil!” Colin called from behind them. Stephen’s eyes snapped open. He and Mina both spun to meet the new arrival.

“I see I’ve arrived just in time,” said Colin, strolling inside as if the warehouse had been his club. “Nice work, well done, et cetera. Medals all round, and a tea with cream and buns, too.”

Relief flooded out of Stephen with his next breath, almost as strong as the fire had been. He closed his eyes again and focused his will inward. The time for this form had passed, for now. He concentrated on being human again, on a body that was two-legged and smooth-skinned and could hold a woman without crushing her.

Nothing happened.

“Stephen?” Mina’s voice came out hoarse from too much screaming. Her throat hurt now. Most of her body hurt—her wrists and ankles from the rope, her face from Ward’s hand, and the back of her head from the pipe, as well as spots all over her body from throwing herself across the room, grabbing the sorcerer, and then dropping off him again.

Stephen had actually been fighting the half manes, though. Ward had hit him with at least one spell. Mina could see cracked patches of scales on his back and blood oozing from some of them. She wasn’t sure what they’d be when he turned human again, but she was sure they wouldn’t be comfortable.

“Are you all right?”

He only stared at her. In the shadowy room, his eyes shone, bright gold and the size of saucers. Mina bit down on her lip.

“Are you all right?” Colin asked, turning from his brother. “It looked as though you were in a bit of a tight spot there.”

“Fine,” said Mina, waving off the question. “But is he?” She glanced back over her shoulder at Stephen, who had closed his eyes again. Her stomach dropped. “I need to tell him about Florrie.”

“No, you don’t.”

“But she’s—”

“Under a curse, courtesy of our late friend here. Or was. I’ve taken care of it. Your other sister’s really quite a girl, you know,” he added. His voice wasn’t quite right, and his grin was too flat to be roguish.

He was trying to distract her, Mina realized, and he kept looking back to Stephen while he was talking.

“What is it?” Mina asked, and she couldn’t keep her voice steady this time. “Ward’s dead. Florrie’s all right. What’s wrong?”

With a scraping sound that hurt her ears, Stephen’s claws tightened, digging long furrows in the cement floor. He threw his head back and roared, a world of rage and agony in that sound.

“He can’t change back,” said Colin when the roar died away. There was no humor in him now. His voice was flat, and his eyes were like dull coins.

All the blood ran from Mina’s face as she listened. She could do nothing but listen, and Colin’s words battered against the numbness in her mind even as they made too much sense.

“It was the fighting that did it, probably, the influence of the manes and the wounds he took. He’s kept enough of his mind to govern his own actions—but you recall what I told you. He can’t stay in London like this.”

Some of them go away to live…elsewhere.

As Mina caught her breath, Stephen lowered his head. He’d rid himself of his anger with the roar or had buried it behind a wall of self-control. The huge eyes that met hers were sad but impassive, resigned.

He crouched again, preparing to take to the air.

Mina’s heart tried to beat sideways.

“No,” she said and ran across the floor as quickly as she’d done to tackle Ward.

Stephen didn’t move when she threw herself against his side.

“No,” said Mina again. “Not for me. Not you. Not this. People need you as a man, Lord MacAlasdair. I need you as a man.”

The diary had said that affection for a mortal might be able to reverse the change.

Stephen had never said exactly what he felt for her.

She knew only her own heart. For more than that, she just had to hope.

“If you leave,” she said, and let the tears flow down her cheeks as she spoke, “I’ll come with you—or I’ll find you—unless you tell me you don’t want me. An’ you can’t tell me without being a man, so you’re bloody well stuck with me. But you don’t have to leave. You don’t have to stay like this.”

The shape against her blurred a little, and her heart lifted—but blurring was as far as it went. Stephen bent his head and looked at her, his form still that of a dragon.

The memory of Stephen’s mouth on hers, of his arms tight around her as he told her to come back to him, drove Mina on.

“I love you,” she sobbed, not caring if Colin heard. “I was going to tell you that. And I’ll still love you like this, but oh—” She caught her breath. “I want you to read the paper with me at breakfast and go to museums with me. I want to be in your arms at night. And I can’t do that if you’re a dragon. And you want those things too. I know you do.”

Was he smaller? Standing? Or was that only her wishful thinking? Mina couldn’t tell. There was no hope in his eyes, though, only frustration and despair.

There was one last thing left to try.

Mina drew back her hand and slapped Stephen as hard as she could, palm cracking against the scaled side of his face with a sound like a coachman’s whip. It hurt like hell—probably far worse for her hand than his face—but the pain was just fuel. She raised her voice again and snapped, as sharply and forcefully as she’d ever spoken to anyone.

“You’re not leaving me, you bastard! Change back now!”

Violence was the last of last resorts. If it didn’t break through whatever hindered Stephen, she had lost him forever. And having started, she couldn’t stop. She didn’t want to watch any more, either. Mina closed her eyes, still weeping, and drew back her hand again.

Another hand caught her wrist.

Warm.

Skin, not scales.

No talons.

Human.

Mina opened her eyes.

“Cerberus,” Stephen said. His voice was still too deep for a human, and a stripe of glittering red scales ran up the back of his arm, but the chest he pulled her against was a man’s. Bare, too—he must have had a new shirt on when he’d changed. “Cerberus,” he said again, kissing her forehead. “Mina. Lady MacAlasdair.”

At first, she was too relieved to be surprised. Then she lifted her face from his shoulder—the red stripes ran down his chest, she noticed, but were nothing a shirt and gloves wouldn’t remedy in public, and she’d never mind in private—and made a sound with far more surprise in it than either dignity or coherence.

“Aye,” said Stephen, and then paused. “If you wish, of course.”

Laughing, she leaned up to kiss him. “Someone’s hand in marriage is the traditional reward, isn’t it?” she said. “For fighting a dragon?”

There’s a line about taking a village to raise a child that also seems appropriate for books. As always, I’d like to thank the wonderful people at Sourcebooks, including my editor, Leah Hultenschmidt; my publicist, Danielle Jackson; and Cat Clyne, my editorial assistant, for whipping this manuscript into shape and getting it out the door. I’d also like to thank all my friends and family for suggestions, occasional proofreading, and encouragement.

Isabel Cooper lives in Boston, in an apartment with two houseplants, an inordinate number of stairs, a silver sword, and a basket of sequined fruit. By day, she works as a theoretically mild-mannered legal editor; by night, she tries to sleep. She’s only ever broken into one house, and that was in college and for very good reasons. Well, sort of good reasons. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

You can find out more at isabelcooper.org.